Sounds-of-my-silence - The Sounds Of My Silence

Guanyin (Kuan Yin, Guan Yin), the bodhisvatta and Goddess of compassion. 

“One of the several stories surrounding Quan Yin is that she was a Buddhist who through great love and sacrifice during life, had earned the right to enter Nirvana after death. However, like Avlokiteshvara, while standing before the gates of Paradise she heard a cry of anguish from the earth below. Turning back to earth, she renounced her reward of bliss eternal but in its place found immortality in the hearts of the suffering.” 

http://www.holymtn.com/gods/kuanyin.htm

Like Jesus, Guanyin literally gave up heaven to help the suffering reach God. If that’s not beautiful, I don’t know what is. I can only try to emulate this heart of compassion and allow my selfishness to fall away so that my life will become a tome of service and love.

Magma

I’ve made it to eighteen leagues underwater Climbing higher But drowning beneath mountains

Breathing is dead to me Lungs accept only air And you provide only gravel

There’s not a noose long enough to dip its knot this low So my spindle claws can grasp its fray Seize its mass, and palpate over its bristles

Gravel cares not who I am It assuages stomach and throat with streams of dawny pills To alter my sense of color

But even under miles of quartzite Coarse amethyst Fractured glitz of oppressive perception

The surface of this ocean’s glassy clear I haven’t seen the sky But I know it’s evening hue is made for me

Always love lifelong learning.

Harvard University offers a completely free online course on the Fundamentals of Neuroscience that you can get a certificate for successfully completing and which requires nothing other than basic knowledge in Biology and Chemistry. This excites me! Here’s the website

Someone asked a good question yesterday that got me thinking: why are some mythologies more “mainstream” than others? Where I’m from, everyone knows at least a couple things about the Egyptian, Norse, and Greek (and sometimes Roman) pantheons, but no one’s ever discussed those of East Asia, or South America, for example. 

My theory: Eurocentrism and colonialism.

Egypt, Greece, and Rome all have some relevant proximity to the history of Christianity. Egypt features prominently in the Exodus, and Greece and Rome were important cultural shapers in the time of Jesus and Paul. When Christianity spread and gained the force of empire through Constantine and others and spread up through Europe, it dominated nearly all the local traditions in its wake. This domination continued through the European colonization of the Americas, Africa, India, and others -- history is written by the colonizers, so it makes sense that the prominent revival pantheons among European-descended pagans aren’t those of the conquered people but those of their own people (Norse) and those that are “necessary” to provide historical weight to Christianity.

Completely conjecture, but this was interesting to think about today.